1—
Relations between Tribes and Sovernment

The co-existence of established states and independent tribal communities living according to their own rules and customs dates back to the earliest times of recorded Indian history. In an age when the subcontinent was sparsely populated and beyond the limits of centres of higher civilization there were vast tracts covered in forests and difficult of access, populations on very different levels of material and cultural development could live side by side without impinging to any great extent on each others' resources and territories. Even at times of the greatest efflorescence of Hindu culture there were no organized attempts to draw aboriginal tribes into the orbit of caste society. The idea of missionary activity was then foreign to Hindu thinking. A social philosophy based on the idea of the permanence and inevitability of caste distinctions saw nothing incongruous in the persistence of primitive life-styles on the periphery of sophisticated civilizations. No doubt, there were areas where the infiltration of advanced populations into tribal territory resulted in a closer interaction between aboriginals and Hindus. In such regions, cultural distinctions were blurred, and tribal communities became gradually absorbed into the caste system, though usually into its lowest strata. Thus the untouchable castes of Cheruman and Panyer of Kerala were probably at one time independent tribes, and in their physical characteristics they still resemble neighbouring tribal groups which have remained outside the caste system. Aboriginals who retained their tribal identity and resisted inclusion within the Hindu fold fared better on the whole than the assimilated groups and were not treated as untouchables, even if they

indulged in practices, such as the eating of beef, which Hindus considered polluting. Thus the Raj Gonds, some of whose rulers vied in power with Rajput princes, used to sacrifice and eat cows without debasing thereby their status in the eyes of their Hindu neighbours. The Hindus recognized the tribes' social and cultural separateness and did not insist on conformity to Hindu patterns of behaviour, and this respect for the tribal way of life prevailed as long as contacts between the two communities were of a casual nature. The tribal people, though considered strange and dangerous, were taken for granted as part of the world of hills and forests, and a more or less frictionless coexistence was possible because there was no population pressure, and hence no incentive to deprive the aboriginals of their land.

This position persisted during the whole of the Mughal period. Now and then the campaign of a Mughal army extending for a short spell into the wilds of tribal country would bring the inhabitants briefly to the notice of princes and chroniclers, but for long periods the hillmen and forest dwellers were left undisturbed. Under British rule, however, a new situation arose. The extension of a centralized administration over areas which had previously lain outside the effective control of princely rulers deprived many of the aboriginal tribes of their autonomy, and though most British administrators had no intention of interfering with the tribesmen's rights and traditional manner of living, the establishment of "law and order" in outlying areas exposed the aboriginals to the pressure of more advanced populations. In areas which had previously been virtually unadministered, and hence unsafe for outsiders who did not enjoy the confidence and goodwill of the aboriginal inhabitants, traders and moneylenders could now establish themselves under the protection of the British administration. Often they were followed by settlers, who succeeded in acquiring large tracts of the aboriginals' land. In chapter 2 the process of land alienation will be illustrated by concrete examples, and it will become apparent that by imposing on tribal populations systems of land tenure and revenue collection developed in advanced areas the government unintentionally facilitated the transfer of tribal land to members of other ethnic groups. The deterioration of the aboriginals' position, which in many parts of Peninsular India began as early as the middle of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century, occurred despite the fact that many British officials sympathized with the tribesmen and some of the most fervent advocates of tribal rights were found among the officers of the Indian Civil Service. Yet, the recommendations for reforms contained in numerous reports were seldom implemented in full, and even where they were incorporated in legislation they did not always prove effective.

Unable to resist the gradual alienation of their ancestral land, the

aboriginals of many regions either gave way by withdrawing further into hills and tracts of marginal land or, if no such refuge areas were left, had no other choice than to accept the economic status of tenants, sharecroppers, or agricultural labourers on the very land their forefathers had owned.

There was only one part of British India where a policy of noninterference and protection enabled the tribal populations to retain their land and their traditional life-style. In the hill regions of Northeast India which enclose the Brahmaputra Valley in the shape of an enormous horseshoe tribes such as Nagas, Mishmis, Adis, Miris, Apa Tanis, and Nishis were the sole inhabitants of a vast region of rugged mountains and narrow valleys into which the peoples settled in the plains of Assam had never penetrated. A small volume of barter trade between hills and plains was carried on by tribesmen from the foothills, but most of the hill people never set foot in the Brahmaputra Valley. When in the second half of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth century the British extended their administrative control over part of the hill regions, they did not encourage the entry of plainsmen, but devised a system of administration which allowed the hillmen to run their affairs along traditional lines. As late as the 1930s the entire administration of the Naga Hills District, for instance, was in the hands of one deputy commissioner stationed at Kohima and one subdivisional officer, whose headquarters was Mokokchung. With the help of a few clerks and a small force of Assam Rifles, these two officers maintained peace and order in a large hill region where bridle paths were the only means of communications. No plainsman was allowed to acquire land in the hills, and the indigenous system of land tenure was retained virtually unchanged. This policy protected the hill people from exploitation and land alienation. It is not surprising that the introduction of a much more elaborate and less flexible system of administration in the years following 1947 sparked off a great deal of unrest, for tribesmen used to running their own affairs reacted violently to interference from a host of minor officials lacking in understanding of local customs. This is not the place to discuss the cause of the rebellions of Nagas and Mizos, which at the time of writing have by no means completely ended, but no analysis of the relations between aboriginal tribes and the governments in power can be complete without consideration of at least some of the rebellions by which tribal populations tried to shake off the yoke of those who had invaded their habitat, usurped their ancestral land, and mercilessly robbed them of the fruits of their labours.

Anyone familiar with the oppression and exploitation aboriginals of regions such as the Telengana districts of Andhra Pradesh have suffered at the hands of landgrabbers, landlords, unscrupulous traders

and moneylanders, and, regrettably, many minor officials must be surprised not by the fact that now and then tribal groups rose against their oppressors in violent outbursts but that organized rebellions were so few and so short-lived. If any of the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh or even of such settled hill regions as the Garo or Mikir hills had been exposed to injustices as severe as those suffered by Gonds, Kolams, Koyas, and Reddis, murder and violence would have been the order of the day, but most of the tribes of the Deccan are on the whole so gentle and inoffensive that extreme provocation is necessary before they take the law into their own hands.

Rebellions of aboriginal tribesmen against the authority of the government are among the most tragic conflicts between ruler and ruled. Whatever course the clash may take, it is always a hopeless struggle of the weak against the strong, the illiterate and uninformed against the organized power of a sophisticated system. There may be loss of life on both sides, but it is always the aboriginals who court ruin and economic distress. I do not refer here to the past risings of martial frontier tribes whose aims were basically political, but to the rebellions of primitive aboriginal tribes of Peninsular India, such as the Santal Rebellion in Bihar, the Bhil Rebellion in Khandesh, and the Rampa Rebellion in the East Godavari District. All these uprisings were defensive movements; they were the last resort of tribesmen driven to despair by the encroachment of outsiders on their land and economic resources. As such they could all have been avoided had the authorities taken cognizance of the aboriginals' grievances and set about to remedy them, not as it happened in most cases after the rising, but before the pressure on the tribesmen made an outbreak of violence unavoidable.

The Santal Rebellion of 1855–56, with which we are here only marginally concerned, was mainly an effort to undo the steady loss of land to non-tribal immigrants, but E. G. Mann, writing in 1867,^[1] listed also a number of specific grievances as having caused the Santals to rise against an inefficient and lethargic government, totally inexperienced in dealing with primitive tribes. Among the causes of the rising were: the grasping and rapacious manner of merchants and moneylenders in their transactions with the Santals, the misery caused by the iniquitous system of allowing personal and hereditary bondage for debt, the unparalleled corruption and extortion of the police in aiding and abetting the moneylenders, and the impossibility of the Santals obtaining redress from the courts. The causes of the Santals' uprising, one of the greatest rebellions in the annals of tribal India, were very similar to the circumstances which led to outbreaks of violence in

[1] Sonthalia and the Sonthals.

other tribal areas. An insurrection which occurred in an area now part of Andhra Pradesh involved the Hill Reddis, a tribe whose present situation will be discussed in the following chapter. This uprising occurred in 1879 and is commonly known as the Rampa Rebellion, after an area which now falls within the Chodavaram Taluk of the East Godavari District.

At the time of the cession of the Northern Circars by the Nizam to the East India Company, the Rampa country was in the possession of a ruler alternatively styled zamindar, mansabdar , or raja . This feudal lord was not a Reddi, but we do not know how he had originally gained possession of the country and by what means he controlled the independent and elusive hill people. He appears to have leased his villages to certain subordinate hill chiefs known as muttadar , and from these he received an annual income of Rs 8,750 per annum, an amount equal to at least Rs 800,000 according to the present value of money. This mansabdar was succeeded first by his daughter and subsequently by an illegitimate son. The latter's oppressive rule led to several minor insurrections, but the last straw was an excise regulation forbidding the drawing of palm wine for domestic purposes and leasing the toddy revenue to contractors entitled to collect taxes at their own discretion. Their illegal extortions and the oppressiveness of a corrupt police were the immediate causes of the Rampa Rebellion in 1879. The operation of the civil law of the country was an additional grievance of the tribesmen, whose trustfulness and ignorance of court proceedings enabled traders from the lowlands to make unfair contracts with them, and if these were not fulfilled according to the trader's own interpretation, to file suits against them, obtain ex parte decrees, and distrain as much property as they could lay hands on. The hill people laid the blame for all this injustice on government and government regulations and thought that their only remedy lay in rising against the authorities.

The rebellion started in March 1879 with attacks on policemen and police stations in Chodavaram Taluk, and it spread rapidly to the Golconda Hills of Vishakapatnam and to the Rekapalli country in the Bhadrachalam Taluk, which had recently been transferred from the Central Provinces to Madras Presidency. While under the previous administration shifting cultivation (podu ) had been virtually unrestricted, the Madras government trebled the land revenue and excluded the tribal cultivators from certain areas. Because of these restrictions the Rampa leaders found adherents in the Rekapalli country, and soon five thousand square miles were affected by the rebellion. In the ensuing guerilla war the government forces comprised several hundred police drafted from neighbouring districts, six regiments of Madras infantry, two companies of sappers and miners, a squadron of

cavalry, and a wing of infantry from the Hyderabad contingent. Despite these formidable forces the rebellion was not entirely suppressed until November 1880.

In this context the history of the Rampa Rebellion is relevant for two reasons. It shows first that aboriginal tribes, even if inherently not of a warlike character, are capable of considerable efforts if driven to extremities, and second that the grievances which had led to the rebellion were basically similar to the injustices and the exploitation under which tribal populations of Andhra Pradesh labour up to this day.

In the East Godavari Agency of Madras Presidency the conditions of the tribal populations were considerably improved as a result of the Rampa Rebellion. The necessity of instituting special methods of administering primitive populations had been forcefully brought before the eyes of the authorities, and steps were taken to protect the aboriginals from the encroachment of outsiders.

The various orders passed from time to time with the view of ameliorating the conditions of the tribal population of the East Godavari Agency were ultimately consolidated in legislation known as The Agency Tracts Interest and Land Transfer Act, 1917. The regulations of this act formed a model for similar legislation in other tribal areas, and I shall therefore quote some of its main sections. In order to save the tribals from the exploitation of moneylenders, the act laid down that "a) interest on any debt or liability shall not as against a member of a hill-tribe be allowed or decreed at a higher rate than 24% per annum nor shall any compound interest or any collateral advantage be allowed against him; b) the total interest allowed or decreed on any debt or liability as against a member of a hill-tribe shall not exceed the principal amount."

Even more important were the sections restricting the transfer of land from tribals to outsiders. The relevant section (4) contained the following provisions:

1) Notwithstanding any rule of law or enactment to the contrary any transfer of immovable property situated within the Agency tract by a member of a hill-tribe shall be absolutely null and void unless made in favor of another member of a hill-tribe or with the previous consent in writing of the Agent or of any other prescribed officer. [Agent was the revenue officer comparable to the collector of a normal district.]

2) Where a transfer of property is made in contravention of sub-section (1) the Agent. . . . may on application by anyone interested decree ejectment against any person in possession of the property claiming under the transfer and may restore it to the transferor or his heirs.

These sections of the Act of 1917 should, if fully implemented, have put a stop to all alienation of tribal land, and it is a sobering thought

that sixty-one years later large areas in what was the Godavari Agency are no longer in the possession of their previous tribal owners, even though the provisions of the Act of 1917 remained in force till the promulgation of the Andhra Pradesh Scheduled Areas Land Transfer Regulation, 1959.

It is only fair to admit, however, that in the period 1917–47 the condition of the tribal populations in the East Godavari Agency Tract was relatively favourable, and that the massive invasion of tribal land by outsiders occurred after 1947.

The need for special protection of aboriginal tribes was not confined to the areas notified as Agencies, and in 1919 an act known as the Government of India Act, 1919, provided "that the Governor-General in Council may declare any territory in British India to be a 'Backward Tract' and that any act of the Indian Legislature should apply to such Backward Tracts only if the Governor-General so directed."

The legislation of 1919 was a forerunner of the Government of India Act, 1935, and the Government of India (excluded and partially excluded areas) Order, 1936. "Excluded areas" were backward regions inhabited by tribal populations to which acts of the Dominion Legislature or of the provincial legislatures were to apply only with the consent of the governor of the province. The intention of this provision was to prevent the extension of legislation designed for advanced areas to backward areas where primitive tribes may be adversely affected by laws unsuitable to their special conditions. Though at the time Indian nationalists saw in it a device to retain British control over selected areas, after the attainment of independence the government of India adopted a somewhat similar policy in regard to several territories on the North East Frontier.

The Indian Constitution of 1950 also provided for the notification of "scheduled tribes" and their protection by special legislation. Regarding the administration of the scheduled areas the governor of each state which includes a scheduled area is bound to submit a report to the president annually or whenever required. The states periodically prepare lists of scheduled tribes, and these have to be confirmed by parliament. As scheduled tribes are in receipt of various benefits, there has been considerable pressure from backward classes for inclusion in this list, and as late as 1977 new additions were proposed by various states and confirmed by parliament.

As this volume is largely concerned with the changing fortunes of tribal populations in parts of Andhra Pradesh which used to be part of H.E.H. the Nizam's Dominions, we will now turn to the situation as it prevailed in Hyderabad State, both in the days of the Nizam's rule and after the incorporation of the state in the Republic of India in 1948.

In contrast to the administration of adjoining provinces of British India, the government of Hyderabad State had not provided for any special privileges for tribal communities. Indeed it was not until the 1940s that the condition of the aboriginal tribes received serious attention from government. In his foreword to my book The Chenchus (vol. 1 of The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad ) the late Sir Wilfrid Grigson, then Revenue Minister of Hyderabad State, commented on the ignorance of the average Hyderabad official in regard to the tribal communities in the following words:

This ignorance tends to blind him to the suffering and the loss of land and economic freedom that results in the backward areas when Hindu, Rohilla or Arab cultivators, contractors, traders and moneylenders are allowed freely to exploit the aboriginals. In such records therefore as can be traced of dealings between the governing classes of Hyderabad and the aboriginal and backward tribes little will be found of deliberate oppression or of positive policy. Laissez faire has been the governing principle, but, as everywhere in India, and not least in Hyderabad, laissez faire more than anything else has ruined the aboriginal and turned him into a landless drudge and serf.

In the following chapters we shall see that indifference to the plight of the aboriginals, be they Gonds, Koyas, or Konda Reddis, is as much the usual attitude of the dominant classes of Andhra Pradesh as it was that of the ruling classes of Hyderabad State. Yet today no one can claim the excuse of ignorance. Ethnographic accounts and published reports are found in libraries, and the files of government departments are crammed with reports on conditions in the tribal areas; moreover, administrative action taken during the last years of the Nizam's government pointed clearly to the type of policy which could have prevented the present decline in the aboriginals' fortunes.

But let us return to the situation in the early 1940s when I began the study of the tribal populations of Hyderabad State. At that time there were in the districts of Warangal (which then included the present Khammam District) and Adilabad large forest areas where tribal communities persisted in relative isolation from more advanced populations. However, these areas had already begun to shrink, and the alienation of tribal land by members of non-tribal communities was an on-going process. Moreover, the reservation of forests, often decreed with scant regard for the needs of the tribal forest dwellers, had begun to encroach on the traditional habitat of such tribes as Reddis, Kolams, Koyas, and Gonds.

There were at that time no officials specifically concerned with the welfare of the tribes and no legislation protecting tribal interests comparable to the Agency Tracts Interest and Land Transfer Act, 1917, of

the neighbouring Madras Presidency. The position of the tribes of Hyderabad State was hence rapidly deteriorating. In the course of anthropological research, initially undertaken without any thought of providing data to be utilized in the planning of administrative reforms, I discovered a great many cases of exploitation and oppression of tribal communities and subsequently incorporated my findings in a series of reports submitted to the Nizam's government. Several of these reports were published by the Revenue Department under the title Tribal Hyderabad , with a foreword by W. V. Grigson, who held the portfolios of Revenue, Police, and Forest, thus being in charge of the departments most vitally concerned with tribal problems. The very positive reaction of the government to these reports—a reaction one could hardly imagine coming in that form from any minister in 1979—can best be outlined by quoting some passages from Grigson's foreword:

The problems of the Hyderabad aboriginal areas are in kind exactly similar to the problems of aboriginal areas elsewhere in India. . . . Conditions in fact in the tribal areas of Hyderabad differ only from those in the Central Provinces in that in the Hyderabad areas till recently no determined effort had been made by district officials to keep their subordinates in check and prevent the extortion by them from the aboriginals of mamul, begar, rasad and bribes or to fight the exploitation (with their connivance) of the aboriginals by cleverer immigrants, such as the Banjara, the Maratha, the Brahman, the Muslim, the sahukar and the vakil , the less scrupulous among whom have long found in the tribal areas a happy hunting ground. . . . The lessons [of these reports] should also be felt in non-tribal areas elsewhere in the State where villagers suffer from the unchecked oppression of that bad minority of the deshmuks, watandars and sahukars who thereby bring discredit on their order as a whole. The press and political bodies have in recent months drawn attention to such tyrannies in various parts of Telingana. But the tribal areas, where the local bully has the freest scope, are less in the public eye and have less news-value, and the offender there is perhaps more often a subordinate official than a watandar or a sahukar . . . . In backward forest tracts where men are poor and ignorant and distances great, justice delayed or justice that is not cheap is justice denied. What are needed are touring officers combining executive and judicial powers, able to punish the tyrant or the exploiter on the spot.

Reading these comments thirty-five years after they were written, one cannot help feeling that the problem of the exploitation and oppression of tribals exists today as much as it existed then and that neither sahukars nor minor government officials have mended their ways to any great extent.

As a result of the interest shown by Grigson in the conditions in the tribal areas of Hyderabad State a number of ameliorative measures were taken which in a short time transformed the atmosphere, at least in Adilabad District, where as recently as 1940 ten Gonds had been killed in a bloody clash between tribals and policemen. A detailed account of this mini-rebellion will be given in chapter 2; here it suffices to say that the measures instituted by government soon changed the tribesmen's mood of gloom and despair to one of hope and confidence in the future.

A beginning was made in 1943 when a scheme for the training of Gond teachers and the establishment of special schools for Gonds (see chapter 6) indicated a new concern by government for the welfare of the tribesmen. This was followed by the appointment of a special officer for the tribal area of Adilabad and the allotment of land on permanent tenure (patta ) to numerous aboriginals, both Gonds and Kolams, who until then had no legal titles to the land they and their forefathers had been cultivating, and who therefore had always been liable to eviction on various pretexts. These administrative measures were followed by the preparation of comprehensive legislation designed to afford protection to tribal populations. It was recognized that rights to land were of crucial importance. Only by placing aboriginals in a position in which they were safe in the possession of their land was it possible to free them once and for all from the threat of economic enslavement by moneylenders and landlords. Even before legislation recognized the aboriginals' prior rights to land, administrative measures and the instructions given to the officers entrusted with the task of looking after the tribals' welfare brought about a change in the whole attitude to the aboriginals. The extortion of illegal fees which minor government servants, such as forest guards or police constables, used to collect from the villagers was stopped or at least greatly reduced simply by the enforcement of stricter discipline, and, while it was clearly impracticable to eradicate all cases of corruption, a great improvement in the situation was soon noticeable. By 1946 the conditions of the Gonds in most parts of Adilabad District had changed out of all recognition, and a community which used to be seriously under-privileged became suddenly the "most favoured" ethnic group in the region.

In recognition of the need for the creation of a special agency for the implementation of the new policy vis-à-vis the tribals of the state, the Nizam's government established a new department known as the Social Service Department, attached to the Revenue Department and headed by the adviser for tribes and backward classes. This department consisted of a number of gazetted officers, as well as of social service inspectors and organizers, all of whom were posted in tribal

areas. Existing special tribes officers, who were in the rank of deputy collector and had been drawn from the Revenue Department, were incorporated in the cadre of the Social Service Department, whereas the more junior posts of inspectors and organizers were filled by graduates with qualifications in social anthropology or sociology. After gaining experience in administration many of these directly recruited graduates were promoted to gazetted posts and ultimately replaced the special tribes officers drawn from the Revenue Department.

The culmination of the entire tribal policy of Hyderabad State was the promulgation of an act known as the Tribal Areas Regulation 1356 Fasli (1946 A.D.). This regulation empowered the government to "make such rules as appear to them to be necessary or expedient for the better administration of any notified tribal area in respect of tribals and of their relations with non-tribals." The substance of this regulation was incorporated in the Tribal Areas Regulation 1359 Fasli (1949 A.D) and the rules giving effect to its provisions were issued by the Revenue Department under the title Notified Tribal Areas Rules 1359 Fasli on 16 November 1949. A schedule annexed to the Tribal Areas Regulation notified as "tribal" 384 specified villages in Adilabad District plus all the 169 villages of Utnur Taluk, and 156 specified villages in Warangal District plus all the villages of Yellandu Taluk minus 3 named villages and all the villages of the Taluk and Samasthan of Paloncha minus 6 named villages. The schedule described the area to which the Notified Tribal Areas Rules were to apply.

These rules vested the administration of the Notified Tribal Area in the first talukdar (collector) as agent, in the special social service officer as assistant agent, and in a panchayat to be established by the agent.

From among the fifty-five rules applicable to the notified tribal area the following may be quoted as the most important:

Rule 4 The Agent shall be competent to appoint such person or persons as he considers desirable to be members of a Panchayat for such village or villages as he may specify and to entrust to such Panchayat any or all of the duties specified in these Rules.

Rule 5 No court of law or revenue authority shall have any jurisdiction in any Notified Tribal Area in any dispute relating to land, house or house-site occupied, claimed, rented or possessed by any tribal or from which any tribal may have been evicted whether by process of law or otherwise during a period of one year preceding the notification of such an area as a Notified Tribal Area.

Rule 6 All suits of proceedings relating to matters covered by rule 5 pending before any court of law or revenue authority on the date of the notification of such area as tribal area shall be transferred to the Agent concerned.

Rule 8 The Panchayat shall decide all cases in open Durbar in the presence of both the parties and at least three independent witnesses.

Rule 10 No legal practitioner shall be allowed to appear in any case before the Panchayat.

Rule 11 No legal practitioner shall appear in the court of the Agent or Assistant Agent except with the Agent's permission.

Rule 13 This rule provides that criminal justice in respect of certain offences in which a tribal is involved shall be administered by the Agent and the Assistant Agent. A number of offences and the relevant sections of the Hyderabad Penal Code are listed. [The list includes such offences as affray, assault, theft, house trespass, adultery, criminal intimidation, etc.]

Rule 16 The Agent may authorize a Panchayat constituted under rule 4 to try the following offences in which a tribal is involved as a party, and the Panchayat shall be competent to impose fines not exceeding Rs. 50, may also award payment in restitution or compensation to the extent of the injury sustained and enforce it by distraint of the property of the offender. [The appended list of offences contains most of the offences listed also under rule 13].

Rule 26 Civil justice in cases involving the rights of any tribal shall be administered by the Agent, the Assistant Agent and the Panchayat, if any authorised under these Rules, subject to the condition that the Agent shall be competent to exercise the powers of any court subordinate to the High Court.

Rule 27 The Panchayat constituted under rule 4 shall be competent to try all cases without limit as to amount in which both the parties are tribals and live within their jurisdiction.

Rule 29 All the proceedings shall be viva voce and the Panchayat shall not be called upon to make either record or registry of their decision. After hearing both parties, and their witnesses, if any they shall pronounce a decision forthwith.

Rule 32 Agent and Assistant Agent shall not ordinarily hear suits triable by the Panchayat but they shall have discretion to do so when they think right.

Rule 53 No land at present cultivated by a tribal or in respect of which he claims that he has a right to hold it, shall be sold in execution of any decree or order of any civil or revenue court whether made before or after the coming into force of the said Regulation.

Rule 55 The Agent shall be competent to recommend to Government the abolition of Patel and Patwari Watans in any notified tribal area and the appointment of tribal village officers in such area.

Anyone familiar with conditions in tribal areas will realize the great benefits conferred upon the tribes of Hyderabad State by these rules.

Instead of having to deal with a multitude of officials and depending on the judgements of distant courts whose proceedings were utterly unfamiliar and incomprehensible to them, the tribals were now in the care of officers of the Social Service Department who were sympathetic to their cause and vested with sufficient powers to prevent the alienation of tribal land as well as the exploitation of tribals by unscrupulous moneylenders and others.

The establishment of tribal panchayat backed by the authority of government gave the tribesmen confidence that they could run their own affairs without outside interference. Some of these panchayat , whose proceedings I was able to observe when revisiting Adilabad District in the early 1950s, worked extraordinarily well, and though the rules did not prescribe the keeping of records, cases and decisions were carefully recorded. In one village of Utnur Taluk, Mankapur, which had a powerful and greatly respected headman, such a panchayat , attended by members from several villages, was still functioning in 1980, even though the Tribal Areas Regulation which had invested it with authority had long been repealed.

The Gonds of Adilabad District still speak with nostalgia of the time when the Tribal Areas Regulation was in force and officers of the Social Service Department worked among them, for at that time they were secure in the possession of their land, and exploitation by outsiders had been greatly reduced. The presence of officers of the Social Service Department acted as a check even on the high-handedness of forest guards and patwari , who knew that corrupt practices and the extortion of illegal fees would be reported to their superiors.

Even after the partition of Hyderabad State in 1956 and the merging of the Telengana districts with the Andhra districts in the new State of Andrah Pradesh, the Hyderabad Tribal Areas Regulation of 1949 remained in force for seven more years. Unfortunately for the aboriginals of the Telengana districts, this regulation was repealed in 1963 and replaced by the Andhra Pradesh Scheduled Areas Land Transfer Regulation, 1959. While the latter regulation also protected the land of tribals, prohibiting any transfer to non-tribals, it did not contain any provision for the maintenance of tribal panchayat , and more importantly stripped the social service officers of the authority and judicial powers with which the Hyderabad regulation and rules had invested them.

The enforcement of the laws prohibiting the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals was now left to the ordinary revenue officials, who had neither the inclination nor the time to concern themselves with the welfare of the tribals. They were also much more exposed to the pressure of vested interest than the officers of the Social Service Department had been. Moreover, the authority of the civil courts, which the

Hyderabad Tribal Areas Regulation had set aside in all cases involving tribal land, was now fully restored, and any non-tribal whose occupation of tribal land was challenged by a revenue official could, and still can, lodge an appeal in a civil court. The immediate consequence of all these changes was the alienation of large areas of tribal land in several of the taluks of Adilabad District.

Some relief to the tribals threatened by non-tribal landgrabbers was subsequently provided by amendments of the Land Transfer Regulation, 1959, enacted in 1970 and 1971, which prohibit all transfer of land in scheduled areas, not only from tribal to non-tribal but even from non-tribal to non-tribal, by providing for conducting suo moto enquiries into non-tribal occupations of lands in tribal areas and for the restoration of such land to the tribal owner if the non-tribal is an illegal occupant, and by prohibiting attachment of tribal land in execution of money decrees. However, we shall see in chapter 2 that despite the absolute ban on transfer of immovable property in scheduled areas to non-tribals from a tribal or non-tribal except in the case of partition or devolution by succession, large areas of tribal land were in fact illegally occupied by non-tribals in the years 1970 to 1979.

Protection of the tribesmen against the alienation of their land, which in Hyderabad State was the cornerstone of tribal policy, seems to have taken second place in the thinking of planners as soon as tribal development was merged with the multisided activities of programmes known as Community Development and extending throughout India as part of the first Five Year Plan, which commenced in 1952. Community projects were not particularly geared to tribal needs, and in Andhra Pradesh only one out of four pilot projects covered tribal areas. In the second Five Year Plan there was a greater concentration on specific tribal areas, and the projects were now renamed Multipurpose Projects. In Andhra Pradesh four such projects covered predominantly tribal areas: one in Utnur Taluk of Adilabad District, one in Narsampet Taluk of Warangal District, and two in Vishakhapatnam District.

The effectiveness of these projects was assessed in the Government of India Report of the Committee on Special Multipurpose Tribal Blocks, 1960, in which Verrier Elwin played a leading role. This committee found that the programmes lacked a specific tribal bias, with the result that non-tribals residing within the project areas benefited from the funds expended more than the tribals. Officials in charge of the projects were more concerned about spending the allocated funds, often on inessential and elaborate buildings, than on meeting the urgent needs of the tribals. The committee recommended a change of priorities and emphasized that officials in charge of projects in tribal areas should not be transferred for a minimum of three years.

In the third Five Year Plan period, Multipurpose Projects were renamed Tribal Development Blocks, and twenty-four of these were located in Andhra Pradesh, covering most areas of tribal concentration. There was no major change in strategy during the fourth Five Year Plan, but it was during this period that in several tribal areas, notably that of Srikakulam District, the eruption of politically motivated violence reflected the shortcomings of the state's tribal policy. While these eruptions were undoubtedly sparked by a widespread revolutionary movement commonly known as Naxalite, their initial impact and support by large numbers of tribesmen showed very clearly the latter's resentment of the unrelenting pressure which advanced populations exerted on their resources.

The response of the government to the Naxalite-led tribal unrest was a repetition of official reaction to earlier rebellions. Ruthless suppression by police freely using automatic arms against tribesmen wielding bows and arrows and the occasional outdated gun was followed by remedial measures, long overdue but never implemented as long as the tribals were docile and law-abiding. Enactment of debt relief, restoration of tribal land, and various welfare measures such as nutritional aid for children were intended to placate the restive tribals.

With the commencement of the fifth Five Year Plan in 1977 an administrative setup known as the Integrated Tribal Development Agency was inaugurated. In this, high priority is being given to agricultural development, largely by provision of minor irrigation schemes. At the same time communications are to be improved and electricity brought even to backward areas. In order to provide employment for landless tribals, the establishment of minor industries is envisaged, and the Girijan Cooperative Corporation is supposed to provide improved marketing facilities for minor forest produce and to supply to tribals many of their basic needs. In pursuance of these aims Integrated Tribal Development Projects were prepared for specific areas of tribal concentration, or in some cases for individual tribal groups.

The successes and failures of the integrated approach will be discussed in the following chapters, but anticipating such an analysis it may be stated that many of the plans under the Integrated Tribal Development Agency are admirable on paper, but have suffered from grave deficiencies in their implementation.

The administrative machinery designed to carry out the various development schemes consists in each of the districts containing tribal blocks of a project officer and a tribal welfare officer, both of whom are usually posted at the district headquarters. There are no officers of the Tribal Welfare Department at taluk or block level, and the implementation of most of the development schemes falls thus to the block de-

velopment officers and the village development officers, neither of whom have been trained in the treatment of specifically tribal problems. The attitude of many of them ranges therefore from conscientious but unimaginative application to outright lethargy. Many good schemes break down because of the disinterest of local officials, while, on the other hand, an active and dedicated project officer can inspire officials at block level to evince commitment and real efficiency. Yet frequent transfers among the officials at all levels have proved damaging to programmes however well funded and well-thought-out they may have been.

It is inherent in any plan for the protection and support of tribal minorities that whatever benefits are envisaged for tribesmen must adversely affect the interests of some more advanced sections of the population. Alienation of tribal land cannot be prevented without depriving non-tribal landowners of the chance to enlarge their holdings, a curb on exploitation by moneylenders interferes with the activities of local businessmen, and any attempt to eradicate corrupt practices of minor officials diminishes the income such persons are accustomed to derive from dealings with ignorant and illiterate tribals. Thus any policy of tribal rehabilitation arouses the opposition of vested interests. When the Nizam's government embarked on schemes for the betterment of tribals, there arose a good deal of resentment among members of the landlord and business community in districts such as Adilabad, and this resentment led to attacks on the policy in the press. But a system of benevolent autocracy could easily dismiss such attacks by vested interests, whereas nowadays similar vested interests can influence members of the Legislative Assembly and through them even ministers, with the result that measures designed to benefit tribal minorities tend to be watered down or abandoned altogether. In such situations officers sympathetic to tribals and assiduous in the protection of their interests are likely to be transferred and replaced by officers more pliable to the wishes of locally powerful pressure groups. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that only an administration of high integrity can successfully implement a policy of tribal development, and it would seem that the failure of many plans for tribal betterment is due to the lack of such integrity in high places and not to any inherent fault in the plans worked out by civil servants.

A few quotations from a report prepared in 1975 by D. Bandyopadhyaya, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Labour, Government of India, and B. N. Yugandhar, Special Assistant to the Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, will indicate that government officials are fully aware of the reasons for the justified sense of grievance felt by so many tribal populations. The two civil servants visited the Parvathipuram Agency of Srikakulam District at a time when the ac-

tivities of Naxalite rebels had passed their climax. After several meetings with groups of local tribes they wrote:

The Girijans came in touch with the administration only in a state of confrontation when they were tackled for infringement or infraction of one or the other regulation which in fact abridged, annulled or tinkered with their customary rights and privileges. Thus the Girijans of the Parvathipuram agency tract found themselves totally alienated from the administrative machinery and newly set up self-governing institutions and were denied opportunities of gainful economic activities. They suffered not only from poverty but also from a deep sense of insecurity. They found themselves deprived at each point and at each front. A deep sense of grievance and injustice enveloped the entire tribal population through decades of neglect by the local administration. The indifference and the neglect was so much that when the agency tracts were redefined large areas of hill tracts inhabited by the tribal Girijans were left outside the agency through an administrative mistake. . . . Later attempts by some energetic district officials to bring them within the fold of the agency tracts have not met with any success. . . . The Girijan is suspicious of every move of the administration. He cannot rely on it. Today after the experience he had of [the Naxalite] movement and its consequences, he is slightly confounded but not cowed down. He has a sullen look and defiance is apparent.^[2]

When I visited Srikakulam in 1979 the atmosphere had greatly changed. By the restoration of thousands of acres to their erstwhile tribal owners and the expenditure of large amounts of money on various welfare measures the government had gained the confidence of the majority of the tribals, while the former exploiters, intimidated by the violence of the Naxalite movement, had not dared to resume their domineering role. Thus the Naxalite rebels had in a way achieved their aim by stimulating the government to tackle the tribal problem and by breaking the power of those who used to exploit and oppress the tribals.

In other districts of Andhra Pradesh, where there has been no spontaneous uprising against the tyranny of landlords, moneylenders, and oppressive petty officials, the position of the tribal populations is far less happy. In the following chapters I shall trace the various stages in the decline of tribal freedom and prosperity in greater detail.

The contrast between the fortunes of the tribes of Andhra Pradesh and those of Arunachal Pradesh, to be discussed in detail in chapter 11, demonstrates incontestably that tribal populations can progress only if during the initial phases of any development programme they enjoy complete protection against exploitation by and competition from non-tribals. The total ban on any permanent settlement of mem-

[2] Reprinted in Social Life in Rural India , ed. M. K. Pandhe, pp. 210–12.

bers of non-tribal communities in Arunachal Pradesh has enabled the local tribesmen to achieve truly miraculous progress, whereas in Andhra Pradesh the unholy alliance of vested interests, political pressure groups, and venal officials has frustrated most of the plans for tribal welfare despite the outlay of many millions in public funds.